A word of warning. This post is about The Next Generation social media opportunities available to indie authors wanting to expand their global reach. If that isn’t of interest, don’t read on.

If it is of interest, enjoy! And in particular pay attention to the graphic above.

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When it comes to The Next Generation social media platforms many indies are letting pass us by, there are so many to choose from it’s understandable most of us just keep focused on Facebook and twitter and hope the rest will fade away.

Meantime savvy indies willing to step outside the box are doing extraordinarily well on these “new” platforms, many of which have actually been around for several years.

Take Tumblr, for instance.

Now Tumblr may be the last place you’d expect to find authors raking it in selling book on. But its gets crazier still.

Try poetry books.

Try completely unknown poets selling not tens, hundreds or even thousands, but hundreds of thousands of poetry books. And mostly in print, yet.

All thanks to social media sites like Tumblr and Instagram.

One poet, Tyler Knott Gregson, has accumulated over a half million followers on Tumblr and Instagram.

According to a post on Publishing Perspectives, “Out of the 10 best selling poetry books in the U.S., three are by poets who built followings on social media.” (LINK)

The post goes on, “…New Zealand–based (Lang) Leav(‘s) poems took off the moment she began posting them on Tumbler in 2012.” She now has almost a million followers.

Leav’s followers wanted to read her poetry in print. So she self-published – and sold 10,000 copies in the first month.

Which in turn led to an agent and trad pub deal and she’s since sold 300,000 copies. All thanks to being on Tumblr.

Most indies are focused on the overcrowded and hugely competitive US market to the exclusion of all else.

Just like most indies are focused on promotion using the overcrowded and hugely competitive social media platforms like Facebook and twitter to the exclusion of all else.

And yes, of course, those who hit the big time really hit the big time.

But the cold reality is, most of us don’t.

Likewise most of us use Facebook and twitter with moderate and usually ever-diminishing results, just as most of see moderate and ever-diminishing returns in the US book market.

In both cases the lesson is clear.

Stepping outside our comfort zones can bring its own rewards.

Being big fishes in small ponds can be very rewarding indeed.

And best of all, once you gain traction in these small ponds you grow as those ponds grow.

Those who are reading this at all have presumably already made the leap of faith and appreciate that, while the US market remains the biggest ebook and book player right now, the collective global markets are where the real opportunities lie.

Similarly we all need to make that leap of faith and recognize that, while Facebook and twitter are of course still major forces in social media promotion, they are not the only shows in town, and we ignore the rest at our peril.

Here’s the thing: Readers don’t give a flying fig how much time we authors have got to do our promo, or which social media platforms we prefer.

Readers use the social media platforms they prefer.

And if we are somewhere else then our author brand and our titles are not going to be on their radar.

Lost connections. Lost sales. Lost future loyal fans who might go on to buy our backlist and everything we publish in the future.

Tumblr may or may not be for you. But don’t dismiss it without taking a closer look.

And then there’s Instagram.

Instagram? That’s all about selfies, isn’ t?

Of course it is. In the same way as twitter is all about telling people what you had for breakfast, and Facebook is just for posting pictures of fluffy kittens.

Meanwhile savvy indies are enjoying significant revenue boosts by exploring the full potential of Instagram. Not least because Instagram is now bigger than twitter!

But no need to take my word for it. Check out this recent Bookbub blog post, motivatingly titled “15 authors running fantastic book promotions on Instagram”. (LINK)

I’ve posted many times about how the non-FB/twitter social media is where the promo action is moving, usually to blank stares and a thunderous silence from indies who understandably feel they already have far too much to keep up with.

But real-life doesn’t care for our overworked schedules,. Social media reach, just like the global book and content markets, will continue to grow and branch off in new directions regardless of how much we choose to bury our heads in the sand.

We’ve all heard of Pinterest, but how many of us are on it at all, let alone using it for book promo?

Is it worth the effort? Ponder this.

We all know the biggest social medium for referring people to retailers is Facebook.

But if we’re thinking twitter is the only other player that matters, we are well behind the times. As above, Instagram is now bigger than twitter.

But get this: The second-largest referrer of customers to retailers is… not twitter, but Pinterest.

Pinterest sends over four times more people to retailers than twitter does.

And while Facebook may be the biggie (now… nothing is set in stone in this game) Pinterest-referred-customers spend twice as much as customers who arrive at a retailer via Facebook.

Obviously we’re talking here major retailers who have the financial muscle and brand recognition to fully embrace the potential of Pinterest, but plenty of indie authors are using Pinterest very effectively on a smaller scale too.

Still not convinced? Check out this post on ALLi earlier this year. (LINK)

And for far more detail and how-to info check out this extraordinarily instructive post on Indie Recon. (LINK)

One reason Pinterest is so hot right now is that Pinterest’s demographic is far more affluent and better educated than either Facebook’s or twitter’s.

Leaked documents released a short while ago showed Pinterest is set to expand massively, with a ton of funding, and set to make big money, both for itself and for those who use it to reach consumers.

Pinterest is a global player with 70 million users at last official release of stats. The afore-mentioned leaked documents suggest the real number now is more like 150 million and rising fast.

And while that pales into insignificance besides the Facebook and twitter reach, let’s remind ourselves of those conversion rates again.

Pinterest sends over four times more people to retailers than twitter does. And Pinterest-referred-customers spend twice as much as customers who arrive at a retailer via Facebook.

As a career author, can you afford not to be taking Pinterest seriously? Or Instagram? Or Tumblr? Or…

They key with the so-called “next generation” or “new” social media like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, and the messaging apps like Viber and WeChat, etc, etc, is that they reach a whole new audience beyond and often quite separate from our twitter/FB range.

This is especially so overseas where so many people are skipping the desktop experience altogether and going straight from no internet to smartphone apps.

For them Instagram and Weibo, Kik and Kakao-Talk, Viver and WeChat, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram, etc, are just part of the furniture.

They are not new and scary fads to be wafted away. They are where the action is.

And, increasingly, where our prospective readers are.

I’ll be following up this post with an update very shortly on the messaging apps scene, because messaging apps are another social media arena very few indies are taking seriously, and are consequently missing a major opportunity to reach new readers.

No, Instagram, Pinterest, Tsu, WhatsApp, WeChat and a gazillion other social media prospects may not be quite as big as Facebook now or in the near future.

But any and most likely several will prove be the perfect small ponds for us to be big fish in, if we will just step outside our comfort zone and take a closer look at the upstart start-ups chasing Facebook’s crown.

Remember, it was only a few short years ago that MySpace was the titan of social media and, for many a social media maven, the only show in town.

How times change.

As the first half of this decade winds down and the run-up to 2020 and the 5G era of the Internet of Things gets underway, we all need to be thinking seriously about the *next* five years and how radically different they are going to be from the *past* five years.

Embrace the future. Because it’s gonna happen whether we like it or not.

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Post Update:

$10 Pay-As-You-Go Smartphones At Wal-Mart. No Excuse Now For Not Joining The Next Generation Social Media Platforms.

With TNG social media like Instagram and messaging apps like Viber getting hotter and hotter by the day it’s a real PITA that you need a smartphone to participate.

Even though many, like Viber, have desk-top access, you still need a smartphone number to sign up in the first place.

And some people, quite understandably, do not want the expense of a new phone, a monthly payment plan, etc, just to join Instagram or Viber.

For those in America it seems salvation is at hand, with Wal-Mart now offering a smartphone for just ten bucks, and on a Pay As You Go plan, so no crazy monthly payments for a phone you will rarely use.

Perfect to buy, along with a separate sim card and phone number, and use exclusively for social media like Instagram and messaging apps like Viber, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, etc.

Messaging apps are now reaching close to two billion people. A full and updated post on this very shortly.

Don’t get stuck in the past for the sake of ten bucks. Move with the times. Get smart. Or at least a smartphone.

Think about the next five years, not the next five weeks.

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